Wolf Hall TV series: Damian Lewis to play Henry VIII in BBC adaptation | The Independent Wolf Hall TV series: Damian Lewis to play Henry VIII in BBC adaptation Friday 9 May 2014 10:29 BST Click to follow The Independent Culture Damian Lewis will tackle the regal role of Henry VIII in a new BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel ’s Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies. The Homeland actor, 43, will star opposite Mark Rylance’s Thomas Cromwell as part of a cast that also includes Sherlock’s Mark Gatiss as Henry VIII’s faithful servant, Jonathan Pryce as Cardinal Wolsey and Anton Lesser as Thomas More. Mantel’s bestselling novels follow the rapid rise of Cromwell from poor blacksmith’s son to tough political leader Henry VIII’s first two wives, Anne Boleyn and Catherine of Aragon will have leading roles in the six-part miniseries, due to air on BBC2 in 2015. Claire Foy will play Anne and Joanne Whalley, Catherine. Saskia Reeves, Richard Dillane and Call the Midwife's Jessica Raine are also among the cast.

Oscar-nominated Peter Straughan (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) has written the challenging script, with Peter Kosminsky signed on to direct. Filming is set to take place in Bristol and Wiltshire’s Great Chalfield Manor and Lacock Abbey. Rylance has paid tribute to Mantel’s “detailed imagination of the world of Thomas Cromwell” and Straughan’s “ingenious and faithful adaptation”. A Royal Shakespeare Company adaptation of Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies is playing in London at the moment, with Nathaniel Parker and Ben Miles in the roles of Henry VIII and Cromwell respectively. Mantel is currently working on the third instalment of the trilogy, Mirror and the Light, which opens just moments after Boleyn’s beheading. Damian Lewis to play Wolf Hall's Henry VIII - BBC News BBC News Damian Lewis to play Wolf Hall's Henry VIII 8 May 2014 Close share panel Image caption The mini-series will be broadcast on BBC Two next year Damian Lewis will play Henry VIII in the forthcoming BBC adaptation of Wolf Hall, based on the first of Hilary Mantel's Booker Prize-winning novels.

Lewis, who became a household name in TV series Homeland, will star opposite Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell. The series charts Cromwell's meteoric rise from blacksmith's son to the king's closest adviser. The six-part mini-series, to be broadcast next year, also includes Mark Gatiss and Jonathan Pryce in the cast. Pryce will play Cromwell's early mentor and protector, Cardinal Wolsey, while Gatiss will play Stephen Gardiner, Secretary to the King. Anne Boleyn - whose marriage to Henry VIII Cromwell is implicit in securing - will be played by Little Dorrit star Claire Foy, while the ousted Katherine of Aragon will be played by Joanne Whalley. Rylance praised director Peter Kosminsky on his choice of actors: "I feel he has cast Wolf Hall with a superb eye for character and all the nuanced humanity Ms Mantel's masterpieces deserve." Jessica Raine, Richard Dillane and Saskia Reeves are also set to star in the drama. A stage adaptation of Wolf Hall and its sequel Bring Up The Bodies are currently playing in London after a successful opening at Stratford upon Avon.

Ben Miles and Nathaniel Parker play Cromwell and Henry VIII respectively in the acclaimed Royal Shakespeare Company adaptation. Mantel is currently writing the third instalment in her Cromwell trilogy, to be entitled Mirror and the Light. Wolf Hall: behind the scenes of the BBC's Hilary Mantel adaptation with Damian Lewis and Mark Rylance - Telegraph TV and Radio Wolf Hall: behind the scenes of the BBC's Hilary Mantel adaptation with Damian Lewis and Mark Rylance The BBC's star-studded new tale of Tudor intrigue, Wolf Hall, is set to be one of the television events of the year. Ahead of the series, Gaby Wood joined the cast on set Claire Foy stars as Anne Boleyn in the BBC's upcoming adaptation of Wolf Hall, beginning on January 21st. Photo: Giles Keyte Follow 'Stand by for a take, please. And we’re turning. Quiet, please. And action.’ Live trumpets sound at the entrance to Bristol Cathedral, before the heavy doors open to reveal Claire Foy as Anne Boleyn, silhouetted against the sunlight.

Guards in red capes and gold sculpted breastplates frame her as she begins her slow approach down the blue-carpeted aisle towards the altar, her stiff silk train carried by ladies-in-waiting, the bulging belly that will one day be Elizabeth I played by a neat rounded cushion. She proceeds towards the bottom right-hand corner of the shot until she is out of focus. ‘Cut there!’ On the monitor, a clapperboard marks the take, and a flurry of activity ensues: a blur of taffeta dresses, the back of the director Peter Kosminsky’s head. The shot is replayed, silently. The long blue carpet is moved fractionally to the left. They start again. ‘Stand by for a take, please.’ It is July 3 2014 and Bristol Cathedral is doubling for Westminster Abbey in the BBC’s six-part drama Wolf Hall. Based on both of Hilary Mantel’s novels about the life of Thomas Cromwell – Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies – Kosminsky’s evocative and dazzlingly precise adaptation stars some of Britain’s very best actors and features many of its finest buildings, and is destined to be one of the most talked-about series on television this year.

The event depicted today – the coronation of Anne Boleyn – took place on June 1, 481 years before these cameras started rolling, and the filmmakers’ attempts to mirror the occasion have stretched not only to authentically made clothes and historically accurate settings but also – as a visiting Tudor expert notes with approval – to the use of tallow candles rather than wax. It is a mark of their attention to detail that the production’s candle budget runs to tens of thousands of pounds. Peter Kosminsky directs Claire Foy as Anne Boleyn in the coronation scene at Bristol Cathedral, doubling as Westminster Abbey. PHOTO: Gabriel Keyte Related Articles Tudors or Plantagenets: which royal dynasty put the great into Britain? 17 Jan 2015 Kosminsky is spinning plates; the coronation scene shoot is, as he will later recall, ‘a particularly challenging day’. All his principal actors are here – Claire Foy, Mark Rylance, Damian Lewis – and they are under attack from paparazzi . Kosminsky feels it is his job to protect them. ‘If they are anxious I am anxious,’ he explains.

He is also filming with two cameras rather than one, so there is a larger crew. It is a big crowd day – 138 extras who have to be ferried from a car park dressed in heavy costumes (velvet hats, fur gilets, French hoods) and who will later be replicated using CGI to seem like 1,000. He knows that his regular team – the costume designer Joanna Eatwell and production designer Pat Campbell – are under enormous pressure. He is tightly constrained by his own research – he knows, for instance, what music was played, and that a chair was brought over from the left – and by the decision to shoot everything through Cromwell’s eyes, so that the audience is looking over his shoulder, then watching him react to what he sees. Though the books are written in the third person, they reflect Cromwell’s point of view, and in order to preserve that effect the adaptation always places him in the room, never deviating from his perspective.

What is more, Kosminsky needs to deliver for the audience, as he puts it, ‘an emotional climax that is utterly splendid’: when the film is finally edited, it will come as the final sequence in the third episode, the exact mid-point of the series. Mark Rylance: 'Sometimes you felt a bit like a psychiatrist, playing Cromwell'. PHOTO: Ed Miller Between takes, Rylance leans against a pillar, surveying the scene as Cromwell would. Lewis is in the choir aisle, in the gilded clothes and cap of Henry VIII, sitting amid 14th-century tombs and tapping with heavy-ringed fingers the iPad on his knee. The crowd fills the cathedral with an incredible palette of rich colours: dresses made of deep-green or burnt-orange silk, wine-red shawl-shaped lapels, brown fur trim, gold embroidery. There are boys in black velvet tunics with puffed sleeves, women in carmine cloaks with ermine collars. Everything that catches your eye is a Holbein painting come to life. Foy walks down the aisle again.

The second camera is in the pulpit, and follows her from above as she stops, kneels, holds her arms out and allows her ladies-in-waiting to bend her forward, eagle-like, until she is prostrated before the altar. It is an incredible view of submission: her elaborate ivory sleeves spread out against the royal-blue ground, her delicate cheek pressed against the floor. Moments later, she will exchange a glance of quiet triumph with Cromwell: it is the apex of their relationship, the birth of a future for Protestantism in England, and the beginning of her descent towards death. 'It’s the most amazing filming job I’ve ever had ,’ says Mark Rylance, looking back once his 85 straight days of work are done. ‘I can’t imagine there ever being another job like it, where you’re in every scene, pretty much.’ Kosminsky describes Rylance as ‘arguably, the best actor we have at the moment’, and it is striking that most of what Rylance reflects on when we speak is not the conundrum of his own character but that of Henry VIII.

He has taken on Cromwell’s world view, at the centre of which is Henry rather than Cromwell himself: in the novels and the film, we are looking at Cromwell looking at the king. ‘He’s portrayed with a marvellous innocence,’ Rylance says of Henry, ‘and you have a great sense of the effect on a human being of being born into such a fate, and being surrounded by people who believe that you are closer to God than they are. The difficulty he has in recognising that he might be at fault – that almost would be saying, in his cosmology, that God was at fault. He has very complicated patterns in his mind, which Cromwell tries to guide and deal with.’ Rylance laughs. ‘Sometimes you felt a bit like a psychiatrist, playing Cromwell.’ In Mantel’s Booker Prize-winning twist of history’s kaleidoscope, Henry VIII is peripheral – a clever shift of perspective that gives the usual hero a supporting role. It is something Damian Lewis relished . ‘He really is a more expressionistic figure,’ Lewis says. ‘We see him being tender at times, we see him being caring.

We see him being self-pitying, irrational, downright piggish, misogynistic, prejudiced. We see him being creative, artistic at times. So it’s been quite fun having that range.’ Damian Lewis, who plays the lesser character of Henry VIII in the adaptation. 'He comes on occasionally, dazzles, and going away again,' he says. PHOTO: Ed Miller This younger Henry doesn’t have the girth of his later self. ‘The last 10 years of his life he just ballooned,’ Lewis says. ‘He was like Elvis – if he’d died on the loo it would have been perfect.’ Still, Lewis does change shape over the course of the series. ‘Today I’m a svelte 32in,’ he says with a smile. ‘But because my face shape is entirely wrong, we weren’t able to go incredibly fat, so we’ve done it by degrees. We’ve pushed him out to about 40, 42in.’ Lewis compares playing Henry VIII to being a substitute on a football team – in particular, he compares him to ‘Supersub’ David Fairclough, who played for Liverpool in the 1970s and 1980s.

‘He was a redhead,’ he says, identifying closely with the footballer. ‘He rarely started a game for Liverpool – he was always a substitute, and he had a knack for coming on and scoring a winner. And I feel that in this version, it’s a bit like what Henry VIII is. He comes on occasionally, dazzles, and goes away again.’ Lewis as a relatively trim Henry VIII: 'The last 10 years of his life he just ballooned. He was like Elvis.' PHOTO: Ed Miller When Claire Foy read Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, she loved the books. Yet she soon found that her position as a reader was no use to her as an actress. ‘I understood it from Thomas Cromwell’s point of view,’ she explains. ‘So if they’d asked me to play Thomas Cromwell I’d have said, “Yes!” But because you only ever see Anne observed by him, you only have his impressions of her – that she was pinched and mean, gnarled and nasty. But she’s not like that, it’s just how she seems to him. So I had to do the research for myself.’ Eventually, Foy says, she felt angry on Anne’s behalf.

‘She could have been remembered as one of the greatest women in history. Where she came from to become Queen of England was extraordinary. She was clever, she was bright, she was vivacious, she was witty, she was political. But she was also slightly manic, irrational, emotional. And those characteristics were perfect for a political figure at the time. As a woman I felt she was blighted by her reproductive system. It’s such a harsh way to judge a woman. I bet she was exhausted by the end.’ How should we look at the past? Hilary Mantel says that ‘there has been a tendency in recent years to make costume dramas, not historical dramas – to make them look absolutely gorgeous, which covers the completely vapid nature of the material’. She laughs. ‘I’m thinking of The Tudors and, worst of all, The Borgias. It’s a kind of affectation now.’ Anne Boleyn lies prostrate in Westminster Abbey during her coronation. PHOTO: Giles Keyte By contrast, she suggests, this adaptation is designed to defeat expectations.

‘One thing that’s very different from the usual historical drama we get is that normally we have a layer of kings and queens and courtiers looking very splendid, and then we have a few picturesque paupers serving their needs, completely missing the middle classes – the professionals, the intellectuals, the merchants, the lawyers. In this drama it focuses very much, in the first two episodes, on the world that Cromwell comes from, which is the world of the professional man, and then he moves into the world of the courtier.’ Kosminsky points out that he was an unusual choice of director. His work so far has been almost exclusively contemporary, and very political: Mark Rylance played the UN weapons inspector David Kelly in his 2005 drama The Government Inspector; The Promise (2011) with Claire Foy was about the Middle East; Kosminsky’s next project is about Islamic State. ‘The politics are probably why it came my way,’ he says of Wolf Hall. ‘Obviously there have been a lot of other film treatments of this period. It wasn’t so much not wanting to ape them. It was more, how can we honour what Hilary’s doing in these books?

One of her triumphs is that the characters have no sense that they are in history. They just seem to think they’re living their lives – which they were. Henry doesn’t realise he’s going to have six wives, and kill several of them. Anne Boleyn doesn’t know she’s going to be decapitated by a French swordsman from Calais. So that deserves a kind of immediacy in the way you make it. I wanted to make it feel real. I didn’t try to “feature” the costumes, or the buildings, or the food.’ This is all the more courageous for the fact that so much effort has gone into what gives the production its naturalism. In the costume trailer Joanna Eatwell shows me some of the extraordinary garments they have created: Wolsey’s magnificent cassocks; Catherine of Aragon’s pomegranate damask dresses; a fur-lined item she calls ‘Cromwell’s second nightgown’. They are all made according to the principles of ‘original practice’ – that is, held together as they would have been in the 16th century. There is not a press stud or zip in sight, even on costumes for the crowd.

Sleeves at that time were attached with tiny pins – which is where the phrase ‘pin money’ comes from – and even the pins themselves have been made especially for the production. Instead of buttons, they have aiglets, or points, threaded through eyelets. That, Eatwell adds, is the origin of ‘point-scoring’ – men used to gamble for aiglets with which to hold up their clothes. ‘We wanted to tell the story with depth, weight and honesty,’ she says. ‘There’s no cheating on their costumes.’ Similarly, all the interior night scenes were shot by candlelight. ‘So you had the bizarre situation, like at Penshurst Place,’ Kosminsky explains, ‘where you’re doing a scene with Henry VIII in a room that he had stood in, at night, lit in exactly the same way that the room was built to be lit. It created a wonderful look, but also, for the performers, it created an amazing feeling of really being there. You can’t beat that.

Take a good actor and put them in the right environment to allow them to do their best work – that’s my job, really.’ Whoever you speak to about this adaptation, they always, eventually, praise the same thing: the scripts. Mantel uses the word ‘miracle’ in describing their nuanced understanding of the material. Kosminsky says they were the best scripts he had ever read. The real hero of the production, it seems, is its screenwriter, Peter Straughan. When he was sent Wolf Hall, Straughan hadn’t written anything for a year. He and his wife, Bridget O’Connor, had co-written the Bafta-winning, Oscar-nominated screenplay for Tomas Alfredson’s John le Carré adaptation, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), and O’Connor had died during the making of the film. ‘We’d always written together – even when we hadn’t,’ Straughan says. ‘You know, even when I was writing on my own I’d turn to Bridget for help and advice. And I think in the back of my mind was the possibility that maybe I wasn’t going to be able to write again. And then I got sent Wolf Hall.

It was a real gift, because it changed everything. I felt that bit of me that wanted to write come back to life.’ Rylance as Thomas Cromwell, from whose point of view the story is told. ‘I can’t imagine there ever being another job like it, where you’re in every scene, pretty much,' he says. PHOTO: Giles Keyte In the novel, Cromwell’s wife and daughters die young. The producer Mark Pybus suddenly regretted sending the book to Straughan and sent a note warning him that there was a bereavement early on. ‘It was sweet of him,’ Straughan says, ‘but that was the first hook, for me. Because this man who experienced loss and then went back into the world – that spoke to me, Cromwell’s grief. I felt sympathy for him from then on.’ To some extent, the novel and the scripts were already related. Mantel, who has been very involved in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s stage productions of the same two novels, is a writer who finds the flat page to be ‘an exercise in frustration’. She envies the speed of film, and the ability of the close-up to leave a thing unsaid.

Straughan says that, unusually for a novelist, Mantel writes in montage, and always offers the screenwriter a memorable line that will open or end a scene. Nevertheless, in condensing a thousand pages into a six-part drama, Straughan had to give weight to certain strands over others. He chose a revenge plot as the spine of it – Cromwell avenging the death of Wolsey – and complicated that by making the relationship between Cromwell and Anne central. Where the books – which will become a trilogy with the eventual publication of Mantel’s third volume, The Mirror and the Light – trace the relationship between Cromwell and Henry, Straughan’s adaptation has a slant of suppressed sex and power. This shift is so marked that when I ask Kosminsky if he wishes he had waited until all three books had been written, he barely hesitates before saying no. By way of illustration, he shows me an early cut of a pivotal scene in episode three (the episode that ends with Anne’s coronation). Anne and Cromwell observe Henry from a window in Whitehall as Thomas More hands over the chain of office. Cromwell is watching her. He looks at her chest rise and fall as she breathes.

He imagines kissing her neck. The moment is brief but the electricity and complicity in it are extraordinary. ‘Although Henry hangs over the whole thing as the superpower,’ Kosminsky explains, ‘for me, the drama is about the evolution of the relationship between Cromwell and Anne Boleyn, which ends with her death.’ In theory, there are no spoilers in historical drama, yet the continued possibility of so many interpretations, 500 years later, is what will give Straughan and Kosminsky’s series its thrill. ‘The shape of history is not convenient,’ Mantel suggests, explaining why so many writers have chosen to alter it to suit their story. But as long as you are clever, she adds, ‘you can have good drama and good history. They don’t conflict.’ Wolf Hall begins on 21st January on BBC2 BBC - Wolf Hall - Media Centre Media Centre Wolf Hall A major adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Booker Prize-winning novels I am excited to see this world-class team come together for the adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s phenomenal books, Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies.

This collaboration demonstrates the ambition of BBC Two drama and once again takes the scale of our content up another notchBen Stephenson, Controller, Drama Commissioning Date: 02.01.2015 Last updated: 02.01.2015 at 12.11 Category: BBC Two ; Drama Two-time Olivier and three-time Tony Award winner Mark Rylance is Thomas Cromwell in a major adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Booker Prize-winning novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies for BBC Two and Masterpiece on PBS. "Once you have exhausted the process of negotiation and compromise, once you have fixed on the destruction of an enemy, that destruction must be swift and it must be perfect. Before you even glance in his direction, you should have his name on a warrant, the ports blocked, his wife and friends bought, his heir under your protection, his money in your strong room and his dog running to your whistle.

Before he wakes in the morning, you should have the axe in your hand." Bafta-winning director Peter Kosminsky (The Government Inspector, The Promise) directs the flagship drama that presents an intimate portrait of Thomas Cromwell, the brilliant consigliere to King Henry VIII, as he manoeuvres the corridors of power at the Tudor court. The story follows the complex machinations and back room dealings of this pragmatic and accomplished power broker – from humble beginnings and an enigmatic past – who must serve king and country while navigating deadly political intrigue, the King’s tempestuous relationship with Anne Boleyn and the religious upheavals of the Protestant reformation. Oscar-nominated Peter Straughan (The Men Who Stare At Goats, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) has adapted both novels for the screen. Emmy-winner Damian Lewis is Henry VIII and Claire Foy (The Promise) plays the calculating and ambitious Anne Boleyn in the drama which is a Playground Entertainment and Company Pictures production.

Hilary Mantel says: "My expectations were high and have been exceeded: in the concision and coherence of the storytelling, in the originality of the interpretations, in the break from the romantic clichés of the genre, in the wit and style and heart. "The spirit of the books has been extraordinarily well preserved. The storytelling is fast and fluid, the characters compelling, the tone fits that of the novels, "Mark Rylance gives a mesmeric performance as Cromwell, its effect building through the series." Executive producer Colin Callender adds: "Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies were the first books I optioned when I launched Playground. I was captivated by Hilary Mantel’s provocative portrait of Thomas Cromwell - a figure from history traditionally portrayed as a two dimensional henchman but who in Hilary’s brilliant hands becomes a rich, complicated and enigmatic character. A man of lowly birth, navigating the deadly politics of the Tudor court and the moral complexities that accompany the exercise of power. “Just as Hilary reinvigorated the historical novel, her books have provided us with the opportunity to reinvigorate the historical television drama.

Modern audiences are interested in characters on both sides of the moral equation and in Cromwell we have a man trapped between his desire to do what is right and his instinct to survive. In truth it is a very contemporary story, a story of power, loyalty and betrayal that just happens to be about people 500 years ago.” Ben Stephenson, Controller, Drama Commissioning, says: “I am excited to see this world-class team come together for the adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s phenomenal books, Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies. This collaboration demonstrates the ambition of BBC Two drama and once again takes the scale of our content up another notch.” Wolf Hall is a co-production of Company Pictures (Elizabeth I, Shameless, The Devil's Whore, The Shadow Line) and Playground Entertainment (Dancing On The Edge, The Missing) - the New York and London-based production company helmed by Colin Callender - for BBC Two and Masterpiece (broadcaster and co-producers of Downton Abbey, Sherlock) in association with BBC Worldwide, Altus Media and Prescience.

Colin Callender executive produces for Playground, John Yorke for Company Pictures, Polly Hill, BBC Head of Independent Drama, for BBC Two, Rebecca Eaton for Masterpiece, Martin Rakusen and Ben Donald for BBC Worldwide and Tim Smith for Prescience and Altus Media. LV Damien Lewis plays King Henry VIII in BBC's Wolf Hall | Daily Mail Online comments Damian Lewis is swapping modern day terrorism for Tudor politics and conspiracy in his next TV role. The British actor is bringing King Henry VIII to life in the new BBC series Wolf Hall, based on the award-winning historical novel of the same name and written by Hilary Mantel. Damian was on the period set in full regal costume to film the show ahead of its release later this year. Period politics: Damian Lewis stars as King Henry VIII on the set of BBC drama Wolf Hall Nice day for a joust: The British star is dressed in full Tudor costume to film the upcoming series based on Hilary Mantel's book of the same name Though of course the book, a ficitonalised biography, is centred more on the rapid rise to power of Sir Thomas Cromwell in King Henry’s court.

Cromwell had been the right-hand man of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, special adviser to the King, but soon Sir Thomas took his place to become the most powerful of Henry's ministers. Thomas played a key part in overseeing Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon and subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn, and the English reformation whereby the country went from Catholic to Protestant. Drama: The plot follows the rise of King Henry's adviser Thomas Cromwell, who is played by Tony award winner Mark Rylance Makes a change: Damian recently took his leave from US political thriller Homeland Northern setting: Wolf Hall was the name of the Seymour family seat in Wiltshire Playing the role of Cromwell is the award-winning stage actor Mark Rylance, who this week won the Tony for Best Featured Actor in a play for his role in William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Rylance dedicated his award to Sam Wanamaker, who was the man behind the recreation of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London. Jonathan Pryce is to play Cardinal Wolsey, Anton Lesser as Sir Thomas More, with Claire Foy as Anne Boleyn.

Factually correct: Though Henry is often portrayed with dark hair, historians believe it was more red like his daughter, Queen Elizabeth I Renaissance man: Damian has played period roles before, most recently as Lord Capulet in the remake of Romeo & Juliet Mark Gatiss, Edward Holcroft, Ed Speeler, Elaine Caulfield, Jessica Raine and David Hobb make up the ensemble cast. The title of both the series and book comes from the name of the Seymour family seat at Wolf Hall or Wulfhall in Wiltshire, though none of the action occurs there. It also alludes to the old Latin saying ‘Man is wolf to man’ in that Cromwell’s navigations are dangerous and opportunistic in nature.

Nice hats: The actor and extras were making those chapeaus work Wolf Hall: Watch Damian Lewis play a sinister Henry VIII in new BBC trailer | The Independent Wolf Hall: Watch Damian Lewis play a sinister Henry VIII in new BBC trailer The Homeland actor stars alongside Mark Rylance's Thomas Cromwell Tuesday 30 December 2014 09:18 BST Click to follow The Independent Culture Damian Lewis as Henry VIII in BBC2's Wolf Hall BBC A new trailer for the BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall has been released, showing Damian Lewis as a sinister Henry VIII. The Homeland actor stars alongside Mark Rylance’s Thomas Cromwell in the upcoming six-part series, based on the Booker Prize-winning novel of the same name and sequel Bring Up The Bodies. Directed by Peter Kosminsky with a screenplay by Peter Straughan, the story follows Cromwell’s rise from humble blacksmith’s son to the Tudor monarch’s closest advisor. “Now is the time for you to become the king you should be,” Cromwell tells Henry in one scene. “I keep you because you’re a serpent,” is his ominous reply.

“Everything that you are, everything that you have, will come from me.” Claire Foy plays the king’s doomed wife, Anne Boleyn, with footage of her beheading hinted at in the latest teaser. Henry VIII’s first wife Catherine of Aragon will be played by Joanne Whalley, while Jonathan Pryce stars as Cardinal Thomas Wolsey.

Wolf Hall cast in pictures Wolf Hall cast in pictures 1/15 Wolf Hall Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall BBC Damian Lewis as Henry VIII in Wolf Hall BBC Claire Foy as Anne Boleyn in Wolf Hall BBC Anton Lesser as Thomas More in Wolf Hall BBC Jonathan Pryce as Cardinal Wolsey in Wolf Hall BBC Mark Gatiss as Stephen Gardiner in Wolf Hall BBC Kate Phillips as Jane Seymour in Wolf Hall BBC Thomas Brodie Sangster as Rafe Sadler in Wolf Hall BBC Tom Holland as Gregory Cromwell in Wolf Hall BBC Max Fowler as Mark Smeaton in Wolf Hall BBC Jessica Raine as Jane Rochford in Wolf Hall BBC Bernard Hill as Duke of Norfolk in Wolf Hall BBC Natasha Little as Liz Cromwell in Wolf Hall BBC Joss Porter as Richard Cromwell in Wolf Hall BBC Richard Dillane as the Duke of Suffolk in Wolf Hall BBC Sherlock co-creator Mark Gatiss appears as Secretary Stephen Gardiner, Game of Thrones actor Thomas Brodie-Sangster plays Cromwell’s ward Rafe Sadler and Anton Lesser, Mathieu Amalric, Charity Wakefield, Jessica Raine, Bernard Hill, Richard Dillane, Natasha Little and Saskia Reeves complete the cast in more minor roles.

“I love it when an author, such as Hilary Mantel, does her research and discovers an original understanding of a very familiar piece of history,” Rylance said earlier this year. “Even during our rehearsals her detailed imagination of the world of Thomas Cromwell is alive in Straughan’s ingenious and faithful adaptation.” Wolf Hall stars on BBC Two on Wednesday 21 January at 9pm. ‘Wolf Hall’ views history through eyes of Henry VIII’s adviser Movie Reviews ‘Wolf Hall’ views history through eyes of Henry VIII’s adviser Wolf Hall Sundays, April 5 - May 10, 2015 on MASTERPIECE on PBS Part Two Sunday, April 12, 2015 at 10pm ET Cardinal Wolsey has been forced to move to York. Cromwell stays in London, seeking to return the Cardinal to the KingþÄôs favor. As CromwellþÄôs relationship with Henry deepens there is unexpected news from the north.

Shown from left to right: Damian Lewis as King Henry VIII and Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell (C) Giles Keyte/Playground & Company Pictures for MASTERPIECE/BBC This image may be used only in the direct promotion of MASTERPIECE. No other rights are granted. All rights are reserved. Editorial use only. By Rob Lowman , Los Angeles Daily News Posted: # Comments Wolf Hall Sundays, April 5 - May 10, 2015 on MASTERPIECE on PBS Part Two Sunday, April 12, 2015 at 10pm ET Cardinal Wolsey has been forced to move to York. Cromwell stays in London, seeking to return the Cardinal to the KingþÄôs favor. As CromwellþÄôs relationship with Henry deepens there is unexpected news from the north. Shown from left to right: Damian Lewis as King Henry VIII and Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell (C) Giles Keyte/Playground & Company Pictures for MASTERPIECE/BBC This image may be used only in the direct promotion of MASTERPIECE. No other rights are granted. All rights are reserved. Editorial use only.

MASTERPIECE: Wolf Hall When: 10 p.m. Sundays, April 5-May 10. Where: PBS. He has the bearing and the red hair, but Damian Lewis had other reasons for wanting to play infamous British monarch Henry VIII in “Wolf Hall,” the six-part television adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s two acclaimed novels. “It’s a very nice compliment to play Henry VIII considering who’s played him before,” says the actor, who had just gotten off an overnight flight from New York City to Los Angeles. He was working on the pilot for “Billions,” a new financial drama with Paul Giamatti just picked up by Showtime, where the actor has achieved his greatest fame on “Homeland.” Lewis is joining greats like Charles Laughton and Robert Shaw who have played Henry VIII onscreen. However, more important than that, says Lewis about taking the role in the PBS “Masterpiece” presentation, was Mantel’s “fresh vision” of the king.

“He is perhaps a more thoughtful, vulnerable figure, while being charismatic and cruel at times,” says Lewis, who was spotted by director Steven Spielberg and cast in the 2001 HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers.” “I think Henry is a capricious, mercurial man and a man who I hope, in this rendering of him, isn’t simply the syphilitic, philandering Elvis,” says Lewis, who will be seen in Werner Herzog’s “Queen of the Desert” and an adaptation of John le Carré’s “Our Kind of Traitor” later this year. Mantel’s books actually don’t center on the monarch, but on one of his advisers — Thomas Cromwell, played by Mark Rylance, who is considered one of Britain’s most eminent stage actors. His profile in the U.S. is likely to grow with “Wolf Hall” and Spielberg’s upcoming Cold War thriller “Bridge of Spies.” Rylance, who has won three Tony Awards, is also attached to the director’s “The BFG,” an adaptation of a Roald Dahl novel.

Cromwell has frequently been portrayed as a villain or a political opportunist in the oft-told story of the downfall of Henry’s first two of six wives — Catherine of Aragon (Joanne Whalley) and Anne Boleyn (Claire Foy). The script for “Wolf Hall” is by Peter Straughan, who co-wrote the 2011 film adaptation of le Carré’s “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.” It’s directed by Peter Kosminsky (“White Oleander”). As it turns out, this isn’t the first time Rylance has been part of a Henry-and-his-wives drama. He played Sir Thomas Boleyn, the father of Anne (Natalie Portman) and Mary (Scarlett Johansson) in the 2008 film version of “The Other Boleyn Girl.” Eric Bana was Henry and the cast included Benedict Cumberbatch and this year’s best actor Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne, whom Rylance gave his first professional role to in 2002 when he was artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Why do we in both England and America have this ongoing fascination with stories of the House of Tudor?

Showtime even had the series “The Tudors” (2007–2010) with Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Henry. Advertisement Rylance jokes that maybe it’s the costumes, and remembers paparazzi crawling across rocky fields in flak jackets to get a shot of Johansson in her bodice. “Someone has called it England’s soap opera,” he says more seriously. “I suppose that these people are grand historical figures, but they are very human, experiencing the death of children, love and lust.” In “Wolf Hall,” which is also currently playing on Broadway in a two-part stage adaptation presented by the Royal Shakespeare Co., Cromwell is the most fascinating figure, although his role is often in the background. “He reminded me at times of Robert Duvall in the ‘Godfather’ films,” says Rylance. “He’s around very violent people, dangerous people. And so it’s best not to speak unless spoken to and best to be careful with what you say.” And there is at least one good reason why.

Lewis quotes Cardinal Wolsey (played by Jonathan Pryce) on Henry’s temperament: “Be well advised what matter ye put in his head for ye shall never pull it out again.” As both Lewis and Rylance observe, this is the period of history that ultimately created modern Britain. Henry’s father, Henry VII, had defeated Richard III, the hunchback whose story was made vivid in popular culture by Shakespeare’s play. “Every English schoolboy knows, ‘My horse, my horse, my kingdom for a horse,’ ” quotes Lewis. As a monarch, Henry VIII was England’s first renaissance king. “He had a great appetite for composing and designing, reading classical texts and learning different languages and he also loved archery and hunting,” says Lewis. The Tudor era, which ended in 1603 with the death of Elizabeth I, Anne and Henry’s daughter, ushered in England’s break with the Catholic Church, its rise as a naval power and some great literature. “I think the whole Shakespearean era would have been very different had this not happened,” says Rylance. Henry and Cromwell were an odd couple. He was a dynamic leader in an age in which men wore codpieces as symbols of virility.

Two of his six wives were executed and two others, including Catherine of Aragon, exiled. Cromwell was essentially a bureaucrat. He came from, at best, moderate circumstances. He made mysterious travels through Europe in his youth but eventually became a successful merchant and banker. Wolsey would become a mentor. Eventually, Cromwell would gain the ear of the king, which rankled many royals. “Cromwell has some very dangerous secrets,” says Rylance. “If authorities knew the fact that he has a Bible in his house in English rather than Latin, that would be enough.” The series adaptation of Mantel’s books on Cromwell — “Wolf Hall” and “Bring Up the Bodies” — cover the years 1529-1536. She is currently writing the third part of the trilogy, “The Mirror and the Light.” Since this is history, it is no surprise how Henry — who desperately wanted a male heir — ultimately dealt with friends and wives who disappointed him. A previous adviser, Sir Thomas More, lost his head.

In “Wolf Hall” he is played by Anton Lesser as somewhat priggish, but many know a more saintly version in Robert Bolt’s play and 1966 film “A Man for All Seasons.” It is believed that in his later years, the monarch may have regretted many of his decisions. “Henry was a self-styled rock star character,” says Lewis. “But his one true objective in life was to have a male heir and that trumped everything else.”

Question: Who played Henry VIII in BBC’s recent adaptation of Wolf Hall?
Answer: DAMIAN LEWIS